Monday, May 20, 2013

The Organized Genealogist - My New Blog and a Discussion Group

It has been quite a week at The Organized Genealogist! What started out as "just another blog" and Facebook group has created a life of its own.

In addition to this blog, I've created a Facebook Group, also called The Organized Genealogist. I posted about it on my Facebook timeline and invited a few friends to join in the discussion. On Saturday my friend, Judy Shutts from Voices in Time, posted about the group in Facebook's Ancestorville community. Ancestorville has more than 30,000 participants and they began flocking to The Organized Genealogist like crazy.

Other Facebook friends and blogs started mentioning the group and as of this morning, we are approaching 1,000 group members! One of them commented this morning, "you've created a monster!" I feel like it. I immediately had to get by with a little help from my friends and fellow bloggers Becky Jamison (Grace and Glory), Deb Ruth (Adventures in Genealogy) and Linda McAuley (Documenting the Details) stepped up to help me administer the group and stay on top of membership approvals. I could not have made it through the past two days without them!

In addition to the tips offered and advice sought, I am LOVING all of the photographs that people are posting of our genealogy spaces. Some have commented that the group name should have been The DIS-organized Genealogist or Hoarders: Genealogy Edition. What's fun about this is that we can post the photographs of our mess and clutter, and then in a few weeks be able to display, with pride, our transformation.

We had some good natured fun with Drew Smith of The Genealogy Guys. He posted a photo of his bare naked desk, nothing on the bulletin board, nothing on the white board, no papers to be seen anywhere. After we voiced our amazement, Drew then posted the photo of the OTHER side of the room. Relief! He's just like the rest of us, but his piles and boxes look a bit more organized.

So, we are having a great time and the support of the membership is already providing inspiration and motivation to those who need a little extra push in getting their genealogy under control.